Pacer and Sprinter replacement

[BR Blue]

BIG,BIG order for trains needed here...............

My figures are from the network rail`s rolling stock RUS.

I`ve roughly added up the pacer and sprinter fleets and have come to approx 1300 carriages. Of these, 290 are pacers which are configured into 140 units. The sprinters make up just over 1000, arranged into about 500 units(exact number changes due to operators forming 3 car units).

By 2020 the youngest units(class 159) will be 27 years old, while the oldest(class 150) will be up to 36 years old. The pacer fleet will most likely disposed of by this point. The sprinters can be modified to meet DDA regs, but they can`t go on forever.

An order to replace all these units, en masse, would be on the scale of thameslink. Plus future orders for EMUs could be in 3 or 4 carriage formations - replacing 2 carriages pacer or sprinters - meaning an even larger number of carriages required.

Any relief provided by the class 319 EMUs will be shortlived. There are only 86 of them, configured into 4 car units and they are as old as the sprinter fleet.

 

[ainsworth74]

I think there'd be more of a case for electrifying through to Middlesborough: Despite there only being an hourly service on both the Scarborough and Middlesborough routes, there's no obvious service that could be extended up to Middlesborough to take up the slack if the TPE service was withdrawn.

Plus, there's a fairly substantial Freightliner traffic that runs up to Teeside, which would stand to benefit from electric traction if the route north from Northallerton was electrified

I think on the quiet that the whole Tees Valley would be quite a good candidate for electrification. It's fairly self contained (bar the two hourly extensions to Bishop Auckland), has a half hourly frequency between Darlo and Saltburn, there is freight to Teesport, Redcar's blast furnace and the Boulby Potash mine (if you were to wire that as well though admittedly there probably isn't the case at only a 4/5 services per day).

So if Middlesbrough were to be wired as part of TPE North I think a case could be made for doing the rest of the Tees Valley whilst they were at it.

 

[Rhydgaled]

The "crew" who are taking all this time to do the Lancashire Triangle won't be able to to TPE North in the remaining couple of years, but could tackle some shorter sections (Bolton - Southport etc).

You'd need a whole "third" team to do TPE North or MML (and, even then, you'd need to be 100% certain they could complete the lot by the end of 2019)

I think Manchester - Huddlesfield - Leeds - Selby - Hull and Leeds - York adds up to 117.13 route miles, but I'm not sure how acurate my measurements are. I'm still trying to work out the full timetable for the services over those lines, so I can work out how many DMUs would be saved. With a different collection of lines to wire, I think I've managed to work out a strategy which replaces all but about 25 of the 140 odd Pacers by 2020 without ordering DMUs. However, it does nothing for the 153s being unsuitable if run alone after 2020, so DMUs would still be needed to replace those, and 25 Pacers. If I ever work out how many DMUs the TPE scheme would save, then I'll see if I can find 117.13 route miles worth of the lines I have in my strategy at the moment which save less DMUs.

The Lancashire Triangle team seem only to be able to manage 25 route miles per year, and I have used a third team (3rd rail) which I've guessed would manage the same rate. However, in theroy the GWML factory train can wire 200+ miles per year, I'm assuming a limit of 150 miles per year to be on the safe side, but they'll be done with GW by 2018 and that team is fast enough to get TPE (and a little bit more too) wired in a single year, and is the only way I managed to get the ValleyLines wired by 2020 in my strategy.